A new scholarship will benefit first-year Aboriginal students attending the School of Architecture at Laurentian University in Sudbury.
Toronto-based LGA Architectural Partners, which designed the new School of Architecture, has established an annual scholarship with a $10,000 endowment that, starting in 2016, will benefit an Aboriginal student entering first year at the architecture school.
The Rya and Eric Levitt Memorial Award has been named in honour of founding principal Janna Levitt’s late parents, Rya and Eric, who both had a deep connection to Ontario’s Northern and Aboriginal arts communities.
Eric co-ran Yolles, a prominent Ontario furniture chain whose Northern headquarters were in Sudbury. Yolles actively supported local events and sports teams. Rya, an internationally recognized ceramicist, avidly encouraged, collected and promoted the Woodland Aboriginal artists, starting with Norval Morriseau in the early ’70s, followed by artists like Carl Beam, Angus Trudeau and Shirley Cheechoo.
In a news release, LGA said it shares the couple’s spirit of engagement, as the practice aims to create regionally specific, socially relevant architecture. The new School of Architecture will help revitalize its downtown locale. It was designed in consultation with local citizens, including the area’s English, French and Aboriginal groups, to ensure cultural inclusivity. It will also offer a much-needed hub, with its mix of new and adaptive re-use buildings as well as an all-season public courtyard.
Furthermore, as the only architecture school in Canada to be both based in and focused on the North, its massing, siting, structure and skin are all demonstrative of best practices for building in the region, and, as such, will not only provide a bright, positive learning environment for the students but a positive example from which the students can learn, the release said.
“I feel incredibly honoured that LGA is establishing this award,” Levitt said in the release. “Canada’s Aboriginal communities are underrepresented in the profession of architecture. This will be an opportunity to help broaden the diversity of the profession, which will benefit our Northern communities and the country as a whole by encouraging new voices to create original works — an ideal shared by my parents.”
For more about the endowment, visit laurentian.ca/giving-lu.
